How To Think About Homeland Security

Volume 1:The Imperfect Intersection of National Security and Public Safetyexplains homeland security as a struggle to meet new national security threats with traditional public safety practitioners. It offers a new solution that reaches beyond training and equipment to change practitioner culture through education. This first volume represents a major new contribution to the literature by recognizing that homeland security is not based on theories of nuclear response or countering terrorism, but on making bureaucracy work. The next evolution in improving homeland security is to analyze and evaluate various theories of bureaucratic change against the national-level catastrophic threats we are most likely to face. This synthesis provides the bridge between volume 1 (understanding homeland security) and the next in the series (understanding the risk and threats to domestic security). All four volumes could be used in an introductory course at the graduate or undergraduate level. Volumes 2 and 3 are most likely to be adopted in a risk management (RM) course which generally focus on threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences, while volume 4 will get picked up in courses on emergency management (EM).

Drawing on two decades of government efforts to "secure the homeland," experts offer crucial strategic lessons and detailed recommendations for homeland security. For Americans, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, crystallized the notion of homeland security. But what does it mean to "secure the homeland" in the twenty-first century? What lessons can be drawn from the first two decades of U.S. government efforts to do so? In Beyond 9/11, leading academic experts and former senior government officials address the most salient challenges of homeland security today.

"As I write this, I'm sitting in a restaurant in a major U.S. airport, eating my breakfast with a plastic knife and fork. I worked up quite an appetite getting here two hours early and shuffling in the block-long lines until I got to the security checkpoint where I could take off my shoes, remove my belt, and put my carry-on luggage through the screening system . "What's going on? It's homeland security. Welcome to the new age of knee-jerk security at any price. Well, I've paid, and you've paid, and we'll all keep paying-but is it going to help? Have we embarked on a massive multibillion-dollar boondoggle that's going to do nothing more than make us feel more secure? Are we paying nosebleed prices for "feel-good" measures? . "This book was painful to write. By nature, I am a problem solver. Professionally I have made my career out of solving complex problems efficiently by trying to find the right place to push hard and make a difference. Researching the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, INS, the PATRIOT Act, and so forth, one falls into a rabbit's hole of interdependent lameness and dysfunction. I came face to face with the realization that there are gigantic bureaucracies that exist primarily for the sole purpose of prolonging their existence, that the very structure of bureaucracy rewards inefficiency and encourages territorialism and turf warfare."

Volume 2: Risk, Threats, and the New Normal explains the new political and technological developments that created new domestic national security threats against the nation and the people of the United States.

This new textbook outlines the main theories and concepts from a variety of disciplines that support homeland security operations, structures and strategies. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, "homeland security" (HLS) grew in importance within the U.S. government (and around the world) and matured from a concept discussed among a relatively small cadre of policymakers and strategic thinkers to a broadly discussed issue in Congress and society with a growing academic presence. Yet the ability to discern a theory of homeland security that would support overall security strategy has been more elusive to both scholars and policymakers. This textbook aims to elucidate a grand theory of homeland security by leveraging the theoretical underpinnings of the disciplines that comprise the strategies, operations and structures of the HLS enterprise. In this way, each chapter contributes to a grand theory of homeland security as it explores a different discipline that influences or supports a domain of the homeland security enterprise. These chapters cover intelligence systems, terrorism origins and ideologies, emergency management, environmental and human security, cybersecurity policy, crime and security, global governance, risk management, public health, law and policy, technology, interagency collaboration and the sociology of security. This book will be essential reading for students of Homeland Security and Emergency Response, and recommended reading for students of terrorism, intelligence, cybersecurity, risk management and national security.

In 2003, the President and the U.S. Congress established the Department of Homeland Security. From the beginning, its mission was clear: prevent terrorist attacks, protect against threats to America's safety and security, and prepare the nation to respond effectively to disasters, both natural and man-made. This monumental mission demands a comprehensive strategy. It also requires a crystal-clear explanation of that strategy to Americans and their allies worldwide. In a revealing new book, Homeland Security: Assessing the First Five Years, Michael Chertoff provides that explanation. In a refreshingly candid and engaging manner, America's former homeland security secretary depicts the department's long-term approach, what it has achieved, and what it has yet to do. The strategy begins with the threats America faces, from terrorist groups like al Qaeda to hurricanes like Ike or Gustav. "Once these threats are identified," Chertoff writes, "we can confront them, using every tool at our disposal. We can stop terrorists from entering the country, and discourage people from embracing terrorism by combating its lethal ideology. We can protect our critical assets and reduce our vulnerabilities to natural disasters. We can plan and prepare for emergencies and respond in a way that minimizes the consequences. And we can work closely with our allies abroad to reduce the risk of future disasters." In each of these areas, Chertoff informs the reader what the nation has done and what it still must do to secure its future. How well has this strategy fared in a post-9/11 world? Since that fateful day, there have been no global terror attacks on American soil. Yet in the face of continued dangers, Michael Chertoff warns repeatedly against complacency. He urges America and its leaders to strengthen their resolve, stay the course, and build creatively on past successes.

Security governance in the second decade of the 21st century is ill-serving the American people. Left uncorrected, civic life and national continuity will remain increasingly at risk. At stake well beyond our shores is the stability and future direction of an international political and economic system dependent on robust and continued U.S. engagement. Outdated hierarchical, industrial structures and processes configured in 1947 for the Cold War no longer provide for the security and resilience of the homeland. Security governance in this post-industrial, digital age of complex interdependencies must transform to anticipate and if necessary manage a range of cascading catastrophic effects, whether wrought by asymmetric adversaries or technological or natural disasters. Security structures and processes that perpetuate a 20th century, top-down, federal-centric governance model offer Americans no more than a single point-of-failure. The strategic environment has changed; the system has not. Changes in policy alone will not bring resolution. U.S. security governance today requires a means to begin the structural and process transformation into what this book calls Network Federalism. Charting the origins and development of borders-out security governance into and through the American Century, the book establishes how an expanding techno-industrial base enabled American hegemony. Turning to the homeland, it introduces a borders-in narrative—the convergence of the functional disciplines of emergency management, civil defense, resource mobilization and counterterrorism into what is now called homeland security. For both policymakers and students a seminal work in the yet-to-be-established homeland security canon, this book records the political dynamics behind the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing development of what is now called the Homeland Security Enterprise. The work makes the case that national security governance has heretofore been one-dimensional, involving horizontal interagency structures and processes at the Federal level. Yet homeland security in this federal republic has a second dimension that is vertical, intergovernmental, involving sovereign states and local governments whose personnel are not in the President’s chain of command. In the strategic environment of the post-industrial 21st century, states thus have a co-equal role in strategy and policy development, resourcing and operational execution to perform security and resilience missions. This book argues that only a Network Federal governance will provide unity of effort to mature the Homeland Security Enterprise. The places to start implementing network federal mechanisms are in the ten FEMA regions. To that end, it recommends establishment of Regional Preparedness Staffs, composed of Federal, state and local personnel serving as co-equals on Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) rotational assignments. These IPAs would form the basis of an intergovernmental and interdisciplinary homeland security professional cadre to build a collaborative national preparedness culture. As facilitators of regional unity of effort with regard to prioritization of risk, planning, resourcing and operational execution, these Regional Preparedness Staffs would provide the Nation with decentralized network nodes enabling security and resilience in this 21st century post-industrial strategic environment.

Despite the fact that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been active since November of 2002, the American homeland is still not secure from terrorist attack. What passes as DHS strategy is often just a list of objectives with vague references to the garnering of national resources, and the marshalling of support from other nations. Drawing on the expertise of several of the nation’s leading reseachers and policy experts, Terrorism and Homeland Security: Thinking Strategically About Policy provides policymakers with a much needed starting point for the creation of an effective coherent national security strategy. Its origins pre-dating 9-11, this volume grew out of an extensive project featuring the participation of various institutions including the Army War College. The primary goal: develop a strategy that optimizes security with minimal infringement on rights and liberties After addressing points salient to a central strategy, the book then identifies the domestic and external elements that need to be addressed in building such a strategy. To this end, it examines the nature of terrorist threats, looks at challenges specific to various weapons of mass destruction, and then goes beyond terrorism to discuss safeguarding society and its infrastructure from natural disasters. In concluding, the editors present a number of preliminary suggestions. It is hoped that policymakers and others may take these suggestions into account when developing a comprehensive national security strategy.